Meta Business Suite's inbox, and what a busy team needs on top of it

If your business answers customers on Facebook and Instagram, you already have an inbox: Meta Business Suite. It is free, it comes with your Page, and Meta describes it as a platform to manage your Page, Instagram account, ad accounts "as well as the many people who access them" (Meta Business Help).

It shows you every message. What it does not do is tell you which of them still need you. That is where most small teams lose customers, and it is what Stonechat is built for.

What the free inbox gives you

It is a capable inbox, and it covers the basics well.

• Everything in one place. Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp messages sit together, with comments on your posts (Meta Business Help).
• Team tools. You can assign a conversation to a person (Meta Business Help), add private notes and labels, mark a conversation to follow up, and move it to Done (Meta Business Help).
• Saved replies. Save answers you send often, and the inbox suggests them when they fit (Meta Business Help).
• Automations. An instant reply for first messages, an away message on a schedule, suggested FAQs and keyword replies (Meta Business Help), plus Meta Business Agent, an AI that can answer for you (Meta Business Help).
• A phone app for unread messages and comments (Meta Business Help).

Side by side

What Stonechat adds

Stonechat has the team inbox you would expect: comments on your posts, assignment, private notes with mentions, a knowledge base of your answers and policies, search across every conversation, snooze until a time that suits you, photos and files, notifications on your phone, and a line that tells you when a teammate is already replying. Connect a Shopify store and a customer's orders show beside the conversation, and once you let it read your products, suggested replies answer price and stock questions from what your store has right then. What makes it different is that it keeps track of the inbox for you.

• Who is still owed a reply. Stonechat reads each conversation and keeps a list of the people whose last message needs an answer. A "thanks, see you Saturday" usually drops off on its own. A message someone opened on their phone and forgot stays on the list until someone answers it.
• Who to answer first. Unhappy people go to the top, then anyone who is about to wait too long, then everyone else by how long they have waited. Each conversation is also marked as a possible customer, someone who already is one, or someone selling to you.
• A reply ready in your words, from day one. For everyday questions, Stonechat drafts a reply from your knowledge base and from how your business answered similar questions before, and shows the sources it rests on. Write your hours and returns policy down once and drafts start before you have any history. Its prices, dates and times are checked against those sources before it is offered. Use it as it is or change a word.
• How you are really doing. Set your hours and the typical wait counts only the time you are open, so an evening message answered at 9am does not look like a 12-hour wait. The dashboard shows how many days in a row nobody was left waiting at closing, how quickly each teammate answers, when people tend to write, and how they feel. A month from the past year, or the last 30 days, can go out as a link or a printed page of totals for a client or a partner, with no customer names or messages on it.
• One price for the team. $39 a month for everyone who answers, with nothing to unlock.

Where the free inbox still has the edge

• WhatsApp. Stonechat covers Facebook and Instagram.
• Labels and keyword automations. Stonechat sorts by who is waiting and how they feel rather than by tags you add, and it does not have keyword replies today.
• An app to install. Stonechat runs in your phone's browser and can send notifications there.

Which one to use

The free inbox is enough if one person answers a handful of messages a day and nobody is slipping through.

Stonechat is worth it once DMs are where bookings and orders come from: more than one person answers, people who wrote days ago never heard back, and the same questions eat your evenings. Stonechat keeps the list for you, puts the right people first and has the reply half written.

Meta and Meta Business Suite are trademarks of Meta Platforms, Inc. Stonechat is not affiliated with or endorsed by Meta, and this page compares the two only to help you choose.